Nor could the Girondists found a party of their own. Their ideas were not sufficiently definite for that, nor sufficiently different from those of others. The only principles which belonged distinctively to them were an enthusiasm for the forms of a republic, and an enthusiasm for the policy of war. The latter was partly an ill-considered emotion and partly a tactical device. The former was not a principle at all. The essence of republicanism, which is government by the people, had been accepted by all parties except the most reactionary, and was not peculiar to the Girondist belief. The forms of it, which, possessed by an extraordinary desire to emulate the Greeks and Romans, the Girondists esteemed so highly, were hardly worth a struggle to obtain. The fact that the Girondists should have cared for republican forms so much more than for anything else, is perhaps the clearest proof of their incompetence as practical politicians. For, as Robespierre had the sense to see, the term republic is an empty name, which the faith and heroism of men have sometimes associated with ideals of purity and freedom, but which has often been only a disguise for governments that were neither free nor pure.
As soon as the Convention opened, the Republic was proclaimed, and the struggle between the rival parties began. For the moment the Girondists were the stronger, and they were determined to use their power to suppress and, if they could, to punish the leaders of the Insurrectionary Commune. In that attempt they were partially successful. The steady persistence of Roland, supported by the majority of the Convention, succeeded at last in dissolving the Insurrectionary Commune. On the 30th November, a moderate politician, Chambon, was elected Mayor by a large majority, after two other moderates, Pétion and d'Ormesson, had previously been elected and had refused to serve. The council and the other officials of the Commune were also renewed. On this occasion the voting was secret; and although the Jacobins spared no efforts, and succeeded in carrying Hébert and Chaumette, the smallness of the Jacobin vote and the abstention of the vast majority of voters showed how weak numerically were the forces which the minority could command.
But in other respects the Girondists were less successful. Their proposals for the formation of a guard for the Convention resulted only in bringing to Paris a small force of Fédérés from the departments. Their demand for the punishment of those concerned in the September massacres fell to the ground. Their attacks upon Robespierre, Marat and others produced only bitter personalities, which tended to weary the Assembly, and by giving Robespierre opportunities of dilating on his services to the Revolution, to increase his popularity in Paris. The Jacobins began to threaten their monopoly of office. In the middle of October, Pache, the newly appointed Minister of War, and till then an intimate friend of Roland, cast himself into the arms of the Jacobin party. Suddenly turning on his Girondist colleagues, Pache made the War Office the meeting-place of the politicians of the Commune, placed his influence and his funds at their disposal, and to the disgust of Dumouriez and Danton, threw the military arrangements into confusion.
The Girondists were further weakened by the trial of the King. The long debates upon that question, which began early in November, 1792, and which ended in Louis' execution on the 21st January, 1793, certainly damaged the reputation of the party. They showed in a clear light the stern logic of the Jacobin leaders and the weakness and disunion of their opponents. They gave fresh opportunities for excitement and disorder, which the Jacobins knew how to use. The vote which condemned the King to death was carried finally by a narrow majority, but it could not have been carried without wholesale intimidation. The violence of the agitation in the galleries, in the streets, in the Sections, which steadily rose as the debates went forward and as a feeling of sympathy for Louis appeared, produced so general a panic, that it is recorded that fourteen thousand people fled from Paris in the last week of the year, under the impression that the massacres of September were about to be repeated[10]. It is true that in the end the leading Girondists voted for death; but they voted openly in the presence of an armed and vociferating crowd, amply sufficient to decide the wavering and almost sufficient to terrorise the brave. Vergniaud, who voted with the majority when the critical moment came, had already pleaded for mercy in the finest speech which he ever delivered, and had declared the night before the verdict that it was an insult to suppose him capable of voting for Louis' death.
With the trial of the King the demoralisation of politics increased. The Convention lost all dignity and decorum. The violence of the rival parties deepened. Deputies came down armed to the meetings of the House. The president, powerless to keep order, was frequently insulted in the chair. Abusive terms were shouted across the floor. The voices of the speakers were constantly drowned in the din from the galleries, where, according to Brissot, 'the brigands and bacchantes' ruled. The same demoralisation appeared in the public service. On the proclamation of the Republic, in September, 1792, all administrative and judicial officers were renewed. The Convention declared that a knowledge of the law should no longer be a necessary qualification for judicial appointments. Education was regarded as equally unnecessary, and a number of ignorant and incompetent officials were thus imported into the administration. The multiplication of offices and places, so profitable to those in power, rapidly increased as time went on, and with the spirit of plunder the spirit of corruption spread. Under Pache the War-Office became a centre of Jacobin intrigue, where the Minister and his associates could display with effect their bitter distrust of the Commander-in-Chief, undermine Dumouriez' authority in the army, and, regardless of his wishes and designs, promote their own theories and provide for their friends.
From the beginning of the new year the Girondists steadily lost ground. In January, Roland, their most active supporter in the Government, resigned his office. The control of the Ministry of the Interior, with all its authority and resources, thereupon passed into the hands of Garat, a man of amiable intentions and moderate views, but entirely lacking in force or decision, and with none of Roland's devotion to the Gironde. Early in February, Pache, who had been compelled to retire from the War Office, to the delight of Dumouriez and Danton, was elected Mayor in Chambon's place, and in his person the Jacobins finally regained control of the Commune of Paris. About the same time Condorcet brought forward the Girondist proposals for a new constitution, proposals wildly unpractical in their nature, which gave satisfaction to no one at all, and which lent some colour to the charge, which the Jacobins pressed against the Gironde, that they wished to confer powers upon the departments which would make them almost independent States, to destroy the influence of the Government in Paris, and to break up the unity of the Republic. The Girondists, who had no large following in the capital, proceeded to alienate what following they had. They declared irreconcilable war upon the Commune. They denounced the disorder of the Parisian mobs, and their demands for exceptional legislation in their favour. They boasted unwisely of the devotion of the provinces to themselves. They threatened to punish heavily any attempt at intimidation by the Sections, but they took no steps to guard effectually against it. Finally, they made an attack upon Danton as ill-judged as it was unprovoked, and thus alienated the only man who had influence and ability enough to save them, and who, weary of factious animosities and earnestly desiring to found a Government strong enough to make itself respected, might with a little tact have been induced to offer them his powerful support.
Moreover, the course of external politics once again assisted the Jacobin designs. The victory of Valmy had been followed by a series of successes on the Rhine, in Savoy and in Nice, by the defeat of the Austrians and the conquest of Belgium. But the reckless policy of the Convention, its disregard of treaties, and its determination to spread revolutionary principles at any cost, multiplied the enemies of France. The French Government's resolution to attack Holland offended and alarmed the English. The execution of Louis created deep and general indignation in Europe. Early in 1793, England, unheeding Pitt's pacific dreams, and roused by the warning tones of Burke's hot anger and imagination, plunged into the war. Spain, under its Bourbon princes, followed suit. The difficulties of the French troops increased as their spirit and discipline diminished. The allied armies resumed the offensive. At the beginning of March a succession of reverses overtook the French arms, and the invasion of Holland was abandoned. On the 18th, Dumouriez with the main army was defeated by the Austrians in the battle of Neerwinden, and Belgium was lost. Dumouriez, disappointed by the turn of events, long weary of the Jacobin ascendency and meditating means to overthrow it, rejected Danton's friendly encouragement, talked openly of restoring the Constitutional throne, and determined to declare against the Convention. The Convention, aware of his designs, sent off commissioners to arrest him in his camp. On the 3rd April, foiled at the last by his own irresolution and by the apathy of his troops, Dumouriez left his army and took refuge in the Austrian ranks. Once again the French commander had deserted in the face of disaster, and the danger of invasion reappeared.